Dom Casmurro

by Machado de Assis

LXXIX - Let's Go to the Chapter

As a matter of fact, I enjoyed hearing you speak like that. You know my opinion of my mother. Even now, after interrupting this line to look at the portrait that hangs on the wall, I think it had on the printed face that quality. Nor is it otherwise to explain Escobar's opinion that he had only exchanged four words with her. One alone was enough to penetrate her inner essence; Yes, yes, my mother was lovely. As much as she was forcing me into a career that I did not want, I could not help but feel that she was lovely, like a saint.

And was it certain that he obligated me to an ecclesiastical career? Here I reach a point, which I hoped would come later, so much that I already wondered at what height it would give him a chapter. Actually, it was not possible to say now what only later I presumed to discover; but once I touched the spot, it's best to end it. It is serious and complex, delicate and subtle, one of those in which the author must attest to the son, and the son must listen to the author, so that both tell the truth, only the truth, but the whole truth. It should also be noted that this point is what makes the saint most adorable, without prejudice (on the contrary!) Of the human and terrestrial part that was in her. Enough of preface to the chapter; Let's go to the chapter.